Staff Robot Controls Integration Engineer

About the role

We're looking for a Staff Robot Controls Integration Engineer to bridge our control algorithms with real-world hardware. This role integrates motor control stacks, real-time communication protocols, and sensing systems into a reliable platform.

Responsibilities

• Control algorithm integration: Take control strategies from MATLAB/Simulink into real-time firmware on microcontrollers and real-time Linux systems.

• Validate that implemented behavior matches design intent through dynamic testing and closed-loop validation.

• Real-time protocol bringup: Integrate and commission communication buses (CAN, EtherCAT) connecting motor controllers, microcontrollers, and compute hardware.

• Conduct encoder linearization, sensor calibration, and protocol timing verification to achieve reliable sub-millisecond latency.

• Motor and actuator characterization: Work with firmware teams to validate motor performance — cogging torque compensation, field-oriented control tuning, friction modeling.

• Create repeatable, automated tests that catch control instability and latency issues early.

• Real-time performance profiling: Measure and optimize latency paths across the stack — firmware interrupt handlers, communication pipeline, control loops.

• Identify and close timing violations that degrade control quality.

• Troubleshooting and root-cause analysis: When robots exhibit unexpected behavior in the field, methodically isolate the cause and turn findings into durable fixes working alongside Firmware and Hardware teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or closely related engineering discipline.
• 8+ Years of experience working on at least one of the following areas:
• Hands-on motor controls: You've implemented or tuned PID loops, field-oriented control, torque control, or trajectory tracking on real hardware.
• Comfortable reasoning about poles, stability, and bandwidth.
• Real-time systems and firmware: You understand interrupt latency, real-time constraints, and the gap between algorithm and implementation.
• Experience with real-time Linux, microcontroller programming, or RTOS.
• Communication protocols: Solid experience with CAN, CAN FD, or EtherCAT — protocol analysis, debugging, timing verification.
• Solid background with CANoe, Vector tooling, or oscilloscope-based signal capture.
• Sensor integration and validation: You've brought up encoders, IMUs, force/torque sensors. Understand aliasing, noise filtering, calibration, and how sensor delay cascades into control performance.
• HiL and SIL: You design tests that matter — fault-injection tests that probe stability margins, saturation behavior, and graceful degradation.
• Control theory: You understand dynamics, Laplace transforms, Bode plots, poles and zeros. Can read a control diagram and reason about closed-loop behavior and system stability.

Qualifications

• Experience with EtherCAT, SOEM, Beckhoff hardware, or TwinCAT real-time platforms.
• Proficiency in MATLAB/Simulink for modeling, parameter identification, and control-system analysis.
• Python or C++ for test automation, firmware tooling, and data post-processing.
• Experience with motor characterization: cogging torque analysis, friction modeling, thermal dynamics.
• Familiarity with functional safety standards and how control performance ties into safety requirements.
• Prior experience supporting fielded systems, turning customer-reported instabilities into durable firmware fixes.